About the Author
Lisa Steele
Articles by Lisa Steele
Sick Chicks: 7 Common Illnesses You May Encounter
Buying baby chicks from a reputable breeder or hatchery and providing them a clean, warm place to grow with 24/7 access to clean fresh water and good-quality chick starter feed will generally result in healthy chicks, but sometimes you’ll still encounter issues.
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How to Make Suet Cakes for Chickens
Need some ideas for what to feed your backyard chickens over the winter? As the weather gets colder, the treats I feed my flock focus more on energy and warming properties instead of being cooling and hydrating like summer treats.
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10 Tips for Fermenting Chicken Feed
Have you given any thought to how fermenting chicken feed can benefit your flock of backyard chickens? Fermenting is all the rage nowadays, both in people foods (think yogurt, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, buttermilk, kimchi, apple cider vinegar, even beer and wine!) and chicken diets as well, although the process has been used for hundreds of years as a food preservation method.
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10 Facts About Ducks: Are Ducks the New Chickens?
Over the last few years, keeping backyard chickens has become all the rage. Whether it’s wanting to know where their food is coming from, a desire to be more self-sufficient or merely wanting to go back to the basics, chicken coops are popping up in suburban backyards of families all across the country.
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Hatching Duck Eggs
Hatching duck eggs is an awe-inspiring experience. Since domestic duck breeds rarely go broody (i.e. sit on fertile eggs until they hatch), using an incubator is generally your best bet.
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Caring For Baby Chicks with Pasty Butt
Chick season will soon be in full swing. If you are new to having backyard chickens and just starting out caring for baby chicks, you should be aware of a potentially life-threatening, but easily treatable condition that is fairly common, affecting mainly shipped day-old chicks.
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Saxony Duck Breed Profile
The most often-recognized backyard duck breed is probably the snow-white Pekin duck, closely followed by the domestic mallard, which is mottled brown with blue wing tips. However, domestic ducks come in many other wonderful breeds that should be considered if you are looking for something a bit different.
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Six Winter Keeping Tips for Backyard Chickens
Many people ask: Do chickens need heat in winter? The answer is backyard chickens are far more cold-hardy than you may imagine. Courtesy of fall molting, chickens should have a full set of new fluffy feathers for winter that will keep them perfectly comfortable in temperatures down to 40 degrees and just fine well below freezing, assuming they are in good health.
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Preventing Frozen Chicken Eggs
Here are some cold weather egg tips that might help prevent cracked or fully frozen chicken eggs this winter.
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Bedding For Chickens: Safe and Easy Winter Coop Heat and Insulation
With the proper bedding for chickens, your flock is able to withstand the cold weather quite well. Heat generally isn’t necessary in chicken coops, but we’ve all seen the sad stories of coops, barns or even homes burning down in the winter due to the improper use of heat lamps.
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